Posts tagged ‘politics’

As a general rule, we avoid political, sensitive, and potentially divisive subjects in this blog. We write about our travels, our kids, and life in the Foreign Service while steering clear of the polemics of local politics and the issues we work on overseas. Despite spending some of our Foreign Service careers in Washington, we also try to ignore Washington intrigue and rarely discuss American politics. That said, it would be intellectually dishonest to continue posting about our goings-on without writing about the ongoing government shutdown, which is now in its 24th day and has come to be a prominent feature of our careers and our lives.

TV screens tuned to CNN and Fox News trumpeted the impending government shutdown as we made our way to our gate two Fridays ago, boarding our flight to Phoenix hours before a lapse in appropriations, which is now in its 13th day and appears to have no immediate end in sight. Our automated furlough notices arrived the next morning, as we started our second Southwest road trip with an ambitious itinerary of national and state parks in Arizona and New Mexico.

D saw very little of the USSR during the ten years he lived in Moscow. Most people didn’t travel much around the Soviet Union. D vaguely recalls a trip to the Black Sea and a visit to St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). Thanks to his work, D now has set foot in five of the former Soviet Republics in the last few years: Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, and most recently Belarus and Lithuania*.

It seems only natural that, having met on the backpacker circuitin Ecuador, we would spend our life together indulging our joint passion for globetrotting. Although we have now been to 31 countries together (not counting the ones we have both visited, but separately), we have also traveled individually at times – S with her parents when D was unable to get away from work, D on various work trips to several countries well off the typical tourist circuit. This has enabled us to keep up a friendly, although admittedly one-sided, competition (D keeps meticulous lists; S has lost track of the number of countries she has visited).

This summer marked the twentieth anniversary of D’s first concert, a one-day festival featuring the likes of Green Day and the Offspring. In the intervening two decades, D’s musical tastes changed and expanded, but his passion for (obsession with?) live music has remained constant. Of the 430 shows he’s seen over the last twenty years, 17 have been in just the last couple of months since we’ve returned to the United States, and these concerts have been literally all over the map – D has managed to catch shows in seven states plus the District of Columbia this summer.

Watching the small island nation where we had spent the previous week grow ever smaller as the plane rose above the Indian Ocean, we experienced a familiar mix of emotions. The reservoir of relaxation we had built up during three weeks of R&R started to recede somewhat as we contemplated the long, difficult trip home: multiple flights and long layovers with two small kids in tow. We arrived back in Kigali late Sunday night, the uncertainty of our government shutdown adding an unpleasant wrinkle to the end of our vacation. And yet, we felt buoyant.

The end of the year has a tendency to sneak up without much warning in Rwanda. Unlike its neighbors – and, for that matter, most other countries we’ve called home – which take a break from official business around mid-December, Rwanda keeps chugging along without too much holiday fanfare. Last week, for example, the ruling party held its thirtieth anniversary party congress, and this week the entire country is focused on its annual National Dialogue.

The first week passed in a haze of cruel jet lag. The next was marked by Rwanda’s presidential election – a week full of long days at the office that seemed to persist long after the final ballots had been cast. The third week was blissfully uneventful and marked in its passing the midway point of our separation.